Note that the discussion below is background information only and is not intended as an admission that anything discussed necessarily is prior art.
Tracking people by means of tracking their portable computing devices (such as wireless telephones) has become endemic. So called “smart phones” often support the wireless personnel area network (WPAN) technology, Bluetooth, and the wireless local area network (WLAN), technology IEEE 802.11, marketed under the Wi-Fi brand. And furthermore, as phones, they support cellular network technology. Because of their shorter range, the WPAN and WLAN technologies provide a convenient way to physically pin-point and track shoppers in a mall so that retailers can know how much time shoppers spend in various parts of a store and in front of store fronts and displays. In this way, the overall time in a store can be measured and effectiveness of store fronts and displays in arresting a shopper's attention can be inferred. Also, the number of repeat visits over periods of time can be tracked to learn whether customers are new or repeat. Such tracking information ostensibly is useful in rendering shopping more efficient and convenient to the shopper, as tracking information can be used to design more efficient store layouts, more informative signs, and so on such that shoppers can find products more easily.
To enable tracking, monitoring stations are set up e.g. in the stores that act as wireless access points (WAPs) to initiate communication with mobile devices, but where network connectivity cannot be achieved. Alternatively, depending on the density of WAPs surrounding a store, monitoring stations are set-up that listen in on the communications between the mobile devices and these nearby WAPs. From the retailers' point of view, tracking people by means of their devices can even link a shopper's online shopping with his offline shopping, for example, by capturing a customer's name. This can be accomplished by first tracking and then capturing the customer's name right at the cash register when paying with a credit card which usually includes the customer's name, and then later correlating the customer's name to online databases. The retailer can then leverage both online and offline behavior against each other to increase sales. For example, the retailer may try to provide a coupon to that customer through email or webpage in order to bring that customer back into the store to shop.
It should be noted, that with the device MAC address monitoring, it may be possible to track a person to an automobile, a physical residence and place of business. It does not matter that the content delivered over the network to/from that device may have been encrypted as device identifying information, e.g. the MAC address, is typically outside the data payload being protected by encryption.
While tracking the wireless device of shoppers is attractive to retailers, as understood herein, not all shoppers are enthusiastic about being surreptitiously tracked every step of the way. Moreover, not entirely unfounded concerns have arisen over the potential for misusing pervasive, perpetual tracking information that ensnares most of the public. In short, present principles understand that more than a few shoppers might wish to remain anonymous as they gallivant through a shopping mall or in general cavort through life.